"how to" in autonomous art (metadata)

ART01 Berlin event report

Event held during Transart Institute MFA students exhibition at Concent Art gallery on 25th July 2010 under (symbolical) name “ART01 – Autonomy in Art Operating Systems” inspired Barbara Huber (Au), Maria Karagianni (Gr-Nl), Marian Potocar (Sk), Pod P (USA), Pedro Zaz (Pt) and Kruno Jost (Cro) to create together a unique art project. During two days this group worked in the way that each participant introduced an idea, material, technology, etc he or she were most comfortable with. Ideas were being discussed, methods were offered and finally group created art project that was based on collaborative work, it was using new technologies, performance like structure, it looked for participation of the public and it was critical towards the system of art representation it was being part of.

ART01 at Berlin took a form of an art lab where participants were called to play a role game.

Choosing a role

First,one rolled a dice to choose one of five roles: revolutionary, monk or a nun, parent, police (wo)man or illegal immigrant. This roles were chosen by the core group’s desires to show how different, yet very generalized characters, would react or observe art exhibits.

Card design

After rolling a dice and picking your character card you would roll a dice second time. This time it would show which of the exhibits one will be taken to. for example if your card would be no. 3 you would be a policeman, and if you roll second time and get. no 7 you would go to see artwork of Ingibjorg Hauksdottir.

Floor-plan of the gallery

After observing the chosen exhibit trough the eyes of the character one had to come back to ART01 artlab and communicate its finding, emotions and understandings to ART01 core group members.

Observing the artwork

Than you roll a dice third time choosing a location: a garden, kitchen, bank, homeless shelter, etc. where artwork you observed would be utilized. This little twist in the perception, utilization of the artwork, would be a starting point of discussion with the lab workers.

Conversation transmitted over radio

Conversation was carried out with easy flow of questions putting observer in the position to negotiate artworks utility, answers why this decisions, create a story for artwork and talks on systems of its representation.

People listening radio show at the car parking

Whole conversation was transmitted over FM pirate radio that was able to be picked up by small radios laying around the exhibition space, as well as in the cars on the parking lot outside of the gallery.

Floor-plan design was also projected on the wall near the lab, where everyone could see text inputed with the artwork in question. Shortened statements were inputed real time in the projection.

Projection

This is where texts from Piratepad can be found: file:///tmp/oe4gQRtuer-latest.html
a tool used for online text exchange between core group participants. Latter, all the shortened statements from ART01 participants were inputed there too, have a look at the end.

“Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other mechanism, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.”
Professor at the New York University Philip Galanter.

"Wise men have regarded the earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise and not merely intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises."
THE ILLUMINATUS! TRILOGY by Robert Shea and
Robert Anton Wilson

"Each particular artwork is a proposal to liven in shared world, and the work of every artist is a bundle of relations with the world, giving rise to other relations, and on and so forth, ad infinitum."
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Presses du réel, 2002.